Thomas B. Macaulay
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.Collection: Love
Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.Collection: Latin
Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.Collection: Parent
Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.Collection: Cutting
With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.Collection: Atheism
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.Collection: Poetry
The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.Collection: History
In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.Collection: Perseverance
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.Collection: Future
Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.Collection: School
History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.Collection: Historical
We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.Collection: Writing
The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.Collection: Christ
What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.Collection: Men
Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.Collection: Science
The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.Collection: Mountain
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.Collection: Humor
Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.Collection: Hands
A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.Collection: Night
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.Collection: Country
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.Collection: Revolution
The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.Collection: Historical
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.Collection: Freedom
Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.Collection: Men
No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.Collection: Country
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.Collection: Men
Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.Collection: Politeness
This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.Collection: Book
Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.Collection: Learning
History begins in novel and ends in essay.Collection: History
Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.Collection: Democracy
The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.Collection: Book
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.Collection: Freedom
Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.Collection: Book
Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.Collection: Mean
The business of everybody is the business of nobody.Collection: Business
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.Collection: Greatness
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.Collection: Men
Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.Collection: Men
Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.Collection: Passion
In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.Collection: Mother
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.Collection: Party
To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.Collection: Peace
I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.Collection: Latin
If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.Collection: Sunday
The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.Collection: Judging
I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.Collection: Funny
If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.Collection: Beautiful
A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.Collection: Art